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TNWC Real Brides: Miriam's sharing her homemade wedding details of tartan bunting and a personalised save the date stamp

The lovely Miriam and John are getting married this coming Saturday! So excited for them both and fingers-crossed this incredible British weather hangs around for them.

So over to Miriam for her last pre-wedding blog post…

DIY weddings stitch by stitch

One of my favourite things about The Natural Wedding Company blog is that there are so many beautiful homemade creations from other brides for your wedding and beyond. With our wedding looming very close I am starting to realise how much I will miss all the planning, researching and creating that has occupied most of my brain-space for the last 18 months. Having this creative outlet in my otherwise very science-oriented life has been wonderful, and I will surely miss it – but luckily I will have John and our new married home to carry on the next creative adventure!

Like many brides, physically creating aspects of our Big Day and researching novel ideas has hugely spurred on the crescendo of excitement towards the day, so I thought it would be good to share some of the homemade or personally designed aspects that are not too difficult to incorporate into a wedding to ensure that intimate feel for your guests.

Personal by design

There are some fantastic suppliers out there who will go the extra mile to create something handmade and personal for your wedding, without stretching yourself too far trying to do absolutely everything by yourself (as I am prone to attempting!). I was very lucky to find Noolibird via The Natural Wedding Company, who crafted this beautiful personalised stamp that we used to make our save-the-date cards, and might use somewhere in our home post-honeymoon decorating.

Personalised Noolibird bird 'save the date' stamp

I particularly love the amazing invitations made for us by Wedding Tea Towels. They were so helpful and created a design especially for us by tweaking one of their standard designs, adding in significant touches – cats, a kettlebell, a piano, 1920s font etc.

There is a great choice of colour and fabric, including organic cotton, and they have turned out beautifully. Our guests have been delighted with them, and they have really set the tone for the kind of wedding we would like to create – full of surprises and fun.

Customised wedding invitation tea towels

To go along with these we ordered some card invites from Vistaprint for extra details like food choices etc. You always get a fast, reliable service from Vistaprint and I was surprised at how many beautiful designs they had. It was easy and quick for me to personalise the invites, and much less expensive than some wedding stationery.

Bonny bunting

We couldn’t have a proper Scottish wedding without a good bit of tartan, so it only seemed right to attempt bunting making using three important colours to us. John will be wearing the Scottish National kilt, my mother’s family are MacGregors, and we will be making our marital home in suitably celtic Cornwall (complete with its own tartan) so I bought a few yards of each and got cutting!

Because tartan material tends to be quite thick it makes for easy bunting because it is sturdy enough to use single-thickness without sewing the triangle edges together. I made a triangle template on thick card, then marked out all my material with dress-makers chalk and cut the triangles out with pinking shears.

Making tartan bunting

To calculate how much we needed I found a nifty little calculator online via Jolly Duck Bunting – you just need to know the size of the room you are dressing and what pattern you would like to create. I enlisted the help of a good friend and together we have had a couple of sessions pinning and sewing with the aid of takeaway, a glass of wine (not too much in case the stitching went squiffy!) and some good girly chat!

Delightful detail

Our table decorations are sure to be fabulous with centre pieces by Pyrus using the vintage silver plated teapots I have been slowly collecting from ebay and charity shops.  I just couldn’t resist adding a few little handmade extras that might make our guests smile. I mentioned in my last blog how we wanted to incorporate lavender stems, and I have been busy scrubbing jam jars, cutting stems to size and tying them on with string and lace tape left over from our save-the-date cards. They have turned out pretty well and weren’t as difficult as I had imagined to do, just take a little time.

Jam jars of lavender

I spotted this idea on Pinterest a while ago and just couldn’t resist trying for myself.  Have you ever noticed how wooden clothes pegs look like two people facing each other in an embrace? No? Well with a little bit of fiddly paint work they can! My latest evenings have been spent with paintbrush in hand creating these beauties, I think the resemblance is uncanny…

Clothes peg bride and groom

Baked with love

I am very lucky in that my family are excellent cake bakers, and my sister (also Maid of Honour) and father have kindly offered to bake our wedding cake for us. They always say that food tastes best when it is made with love, so this is sure to be delicious!

There are three different layers, and recipes are a combination of internet-researched and Naomi’s own creations including an absolutely delicious primrose and apple cake using a primrose curd found via Maddocks Farm Organics, who are also supplying edible flowers to decorate the cakes with.

Edible primroses

Perfecting such an important bake has been hard work but provided a bit of fun too, as we have learned how to crystallise our own primroses and had a lovely time picking flowers from the hedgerows around my house while recipe testing! It has been a good excuse to watch some vintage British Bake-off episodes too, all in the name of research.

Images: (1) Photos by Zoe; (2 – 7) Brides own pictures

Comments

Emma on 15. August, 2014

Love the tartan bunting! Great tip x

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